The Crack (13 page)

The question in hand at the time was who should be eaten and the best way to arrive at the decision. Hunger had reached terrible proportions – and the obvious victims, the heiress and her small husband who could still be seen prone in deckchairs on the perpendicular lawns of Courvoisier's house, were protected by Lady Bowlby.

‘You just can't do it,' she kept saying at the meetings of the Food Committee. ‘She's such a sweet girl. And she was so lucky to find him.'

Lady Bowlby's fate was on the point of being decided when the
Lady Merrie
was seen streaming up the river-bed like an unwieldy bird with canvas wings. The women ran to the edge of the camp and climbed up the palisades, barbed wire tearing at their legs and skirts.

Noreen climbed highest, her golden hair caught by the light breeze and fanning out behind her so that she resembled, to Rugglesby's starved eyes, a mermaid on a pole in a sea of rubble and broken concrete slabs.

‘Ahoy!' Noreen cried. ‘Ahoy there!'

Her musical voice brought the flying-boat down on the dried river-bed, only a few feet from the Crack. Rugglesby got out and walked smiling up to the vision. So this was the Welcome Committee! He might have guessed they would think
of something unusual in the way of greeting. And all women! He frowned slightly at this, and frowned more when he saw the ugly, ravening faces of the women behind the stockade. Only Noreen was beautiful. What was the meaning of this?

‘Who are you?' cooed Noreen. Never had she felt more in need of Baba's friendship and support than now, for all their futures depended on how she played it. And Baba had been so much more experienced at the Playboy.

Rugglesby gasped at the question. Then he burst out laughing. Sycophantically, all the women laughed too.

‘I think you know the answer to that,' he parried. ‘Come here, wench.'

‘If you have a knife,' said Noreen, pointing helplessly down at the wire. ‘You could let us out, you know.'

Rugglesby was enjoying himself thoroughly by now.

‘And would I be without a knife?' he chuckled. ‘Here, ladies.'

The wire was cut; with some dignity Lady Bowlby came forward and introduced herself. Rugglesby was slightly puzzled – it was an odd committee, but there was a Lady on it so it must be all right. And when Noreen asked in her sweet way if they could all go aboard the
Lady Merrie
and make a trip to the other side, he consented with a shrug.

‘What's been going on here then?' he asked as they sailed effortlessly over the Crack and landed on the far bank. ‘I mean, everything round where you were seems to have fallen down. Been a Revolution or something?'

There was nothing Rugglesby dreaded more than a Revolution, as it detracted from his personal publicity.

‘Everything's fine this side,' Noreen said breathlessly as she stepped out of the
Lady Merrie
. There, hair shining like a candelabra of electrified glass, arms held out like the Lord Jesus welcoming his flock, stood Medea Smith. It was too good to be true. Unimaginable. They had arrived at the Other Side!

‘Certainly been some changes since I set out a year ago,' Rugglesby remarked in a disapproving tone. He turned to Lady Bowlby for information. ‘This what they've done to Battersea Funfair?' he asked.

Even Lady Bowlby was incapable of answering him. As if
drawn by some great, invisible magnet the women walked up the carpeted ramp and surrounded Medea. As they stood all together embracing, their ragged clothes and gaunt features contrasting strangely with the contented faces of the passing inhabitants and occupants of the big, shark-shaped cars that drove quietly along the ribbons of the multi-level cities-within-cities, Rugglesby was reminded of a painting of a band of pilgrims he had once seen.

Scratching his head, he looked right and left and up and down.

Silently, the women melted away and were swallowed up by the strolling crowd.

It was strange, Baba reflected, how showing foreigners round a place gave you a feeling of authority, a pleasant sense of control and well-being.

Even if you were hungry – so hungry that the ruins of houses had come to look like dishes of leftovers, the scraps of scattered furniture like burnt meat, the wrecked roads like crusts of hard dried bread. And she was thirsty too, so that every fragment of shattered glass lying in the street became an enticing pool of clear, cool water; but nevertheless she was determined to do her duty as a hostess and give as much pleasure to these poor women from Birmingham and Manchester as she possibly could.

Only the young geologist seemed disgruntled by the proceedings. ‘So where's this wonderful food you promised us?' he complained as Baba brightly pointed out the site of the former St George's Hospital and, in the distance, the gaunt shell of Buckingham Palace.

‘We're coming to it,' smiled Baba. Things weren't going as well with him as she had hoped, but the way to a man's heart, after all, was his stomach – and after he had eaten she hoped he would feel better-disposed towards her.

‘Just think,' she went on, ‘I had no idea where we were this morning. When I came to that funny big dome I had no idea what it was!'

‘Did you anyway?' said the geologist, whose name, appropriately, was Stone, in a cross voice. ‘Ever been to the British Museum in your life?'

‘Oh, my feet are killing me,' moaned one of the trippers.

‘I haven't read a book for ages,' Baba admitted, dimpling. ‘The last one was
Black Beauty
. Don't you think it's lovely?'

Stone was silent, and they all walked on without further
comment. Baba's group were now in the remains of a fine, winding boulevard; and it was clear from the expensively dressed dummies lying here and there on the upturned tarmac that it had once been a shopping area of the very highest quality.

When the formidable sandstone ruins of Harrods came into view a gasp of admiration went up.

‘Petra in Knights bridge,' bragged Stone. ‘I wonder if it will be possible to hire a donkey to take us round the site.'

Baba, trembling with anticipation, led her guided tour to the portals of the fantastic monument. Here, she knew, she must explain the significance of the place to her visitors – must tell them, insisting in the face of their disbelief, that in the old days you could get anything here, even a funeral.

‘Or an elephant, if you order in advance,' she sparkled at her guests. ‘And on the ground floor we find the Food Hall –'

A wild stampede left her last words unheard. With their last reserves of energy the business wives ran into the dark temple to merchandise and fought their way through gloves and tights that hung like phantom cobwebs to the decorated inner vaults.

Some clawed at lobsters, others peeled quails' eggs with feverish speed and thrust them into their mouths like sweets. Whole sides of smoked salmon were roughly chopped with meat axes. In the confectionery department, where the glacé cherries on the little iced cakes gleamed like red eyes in the dusty gloom, the wives ran amok. Meringues,
milles feuilles
, éclairs, rum babas were pulled from cracked glass shelves. Doughnuts went down in one gulp. Five-tiered wedding cakes swayed and fell, the minuscule bridal couple pirouetting one last time before being crunched in two by hasty teeth.

Baba and Stone remained in the Fish Hall. Stone was sawing at the haunches of a sucking pig, the main feature of the central display stand, and cramming the raw flesh into his mouth. From time to time he ran over to the great marble slabs of gaping cod, halibut and rainbow trout and picked out a handful of prawns – and each time he did so it seemed to Baba that the eyes of the young piglet stared at his retreating back with reproach. It was impossible, she knew: the eyes were no more than two shining black olives, with pimento eye
brows arched coyly above them; but it did seem such a shame to hack away at him like that.

Stone's cannibalistic approach in no way detracted from his attractiveness to Baba. And as he munched, swaying crazily by now from the
Boucherie
to the beautiful ornamental arrangement of kippers, as he ran, destroying everything in his path, literally eating his way through the place, she thought she saw the beginnings of love for her stir in his breast.

‘Where's the drink kept?' he muttered thickly, bumping against her on one of his wild runs. ‘For God's sake, woman, aren't you hungry?'

Baba didn't want to explain that in her opinion a girl eating too ravenously wasn't an enticing sight, so she smiled demurely at him and said nothing. It had been with the greatest difficulty that she had restrained herself from behaving like the other women: only a few sprigs of décor parsley and a quail's egg had gone down her delicate throat.

At Stone's bidding, Baba slipped away to the wine shop and returned with a bottle of gin and two bottles of hock. Scorning the gin, Stone broke open the neck of the hock bottle on a marble slab and drank greedily.

‘Not too bad,' he remarked with satisfaction. ‘Here, I think there's a little left. Have some.'

He passed her the bottle casually, but Baba could sense Stone's growing awareness of her ravishing body and sweet little ears. With a tail waggle that reminded her sadly of the past, she accepted the dregs of wine and sipped prettily. And when she was offered a chunk of raw pig on the end of a butcher's knife she let it slip down with apparent relish.

Sated with cakes and soft drinks, the business wives staggered back to the great hall in search of their guide.

‘Time we got to the river,' one of them announced shrilly. ‘Where's that courier gone?'

‘Oh look!' cried another. ‘Really! I must say!'

Stone and Baba lay entwined amongst the discarded lobster claws and half-eaten lamb chops on the floor of the Food Hall. Paper cutlet-frills crackled under their sinuously moving bodies. The backbone of a plucked chicken snapped under their weight as they kissed and rolled and finally came to
orgasm. Panting, gasping with pleasure they pulled themselves to a sitting position to find a row of angry eyes fixed on them.

‘Dear oh dear,' said Baba as she wiped the blood from a tray of calves' liver from her new outfit. ‘I suppose we'd better be going now.'

‘I want to exit through Drugs and Perfumery,' snapped a tall middle-aged woman. ‘Get a look at the bath essences.'

‘Handbags! Stationery!' chorused the others.

With difficulty, Baba led her furious guests out of the emporium and on the road to Chelsea. Her back was aching and her clothes smelt of shellfish but she was happy.

As Stone, Baba and the wives were making their way to the banks of the river the businessmen and scholars were on the point of arriving there by another route. As always happened with new arrivals to the scene, a gasp of disbelief went up at the sight of the drained river-bed and the enormous Crack, which stretched now almost the whole width of the expanded Thames.

Disoriented at first, the ill-assorted company wandered down Cheyne Walk, oohing and aahing at the slumped houses and general appearance of disintegration.

It wasn't long before McDougall was spotted, however. Lying at an uncomfortable angle on his perilous lawn, he was in the process of being handed a cup of grass tea by the heiress and her husband.

‘It's the best we can manage I'm afraid,' the husband said sycophantically. McDougall had promised him a fifty-fifty share in the redevelopment of all London north of the river, and he eagerly awaited overcrowding to become unbearable on the other side.

‘Thanks a lot,' McDougall said in his languid way. ‘What the hell's that, coming towards us?'

So sure was McDougall by now of his empire that he felt convinced of his ability to handle the occasional group of leftover hippies. Yawning, he gazed up Cheyne Walk at the approaching mob.

‘Visitors?' squeaked the husband.

Several of the scholars who had previously held liberal or even High Tory views were now left-wing, almost communist.
Fuming with rage at the destruction of London, the disintegration of society and their lowly position in what remained of it, they pressed forward, jagged planks in hand. The businessmen, confused as to their own future but unchanged politically, followed them at a safe distance.

‘Capitalist hyena!' Ebbing-Smith snorted. ‘String him up! Imperialist lackey!'

McDougall shifted restlessly on the dry, sloping grass. He rose, tried to back away from the radical scholars, and slipped down the steep gradient into the street.

A cheer of derision went up from the angry men. Flushing, McDougall pulled himself up again.

‘A lot to answer for,' Ebbing-Smith was saying as the tumult died down. ‘How do you account for these events. Eh?'

‘He was the man all right,' a businessman put in. ‘Said he'd rehouse every single inhabitant of London this side of the river – put them in dormitories on the other side, he said.'

McDougall faced the mob, his calm disappearing visibly. There was an unpleasant lull as the men awaited their moment to lynch.

Baba's party came down the flat plains of Danvers Street and arrived in Cheyne Walk. Thrown off their guard by the appearance of their wives, the businessmen moved away uneasily. Ebbing-Smith barked an order for them to stop where they were, but it was too late. Taking advantage of the moment of chaos, McDougall had slipped away.

Then Baba pointed, her hand shaking with terror, in the direction of Chiswick and Kew. The scream she let out was so bloodcurdlingly loud that everyone stood still, staring first at Baba's trembling fingers and then at the great curve of the river-bed. Ebbing-Smith gave a low moan and clutched the lady historian's sharp figure for support.

A huge tidal wave of water was bearing down on them. A twenty-foot wall, solid and implacable, it came at the speed of a monster in a nightmare – slowly, but too fast for anyone to have a chance to turn back before it was on them. The sound was a low roar, like the sound of jungles falling, flattened by a tornado. It was only half a mile away now and the crest was visible: it seemed to carry on its head a jumble of chairs and
tables and broken driftwood of every description – and what looked to the sickened eyes of the spectators like legs and arms, thrashing feebly in the brown foam.